Journeyman's Pro Audio Briefing

A place to discuss pro audio with an emphasis on weekend warriors. Why I love it, how I do it, and why you do it too. Cost effective tips, equipment and techniques for the avg muso and DJ. Musings on why it holds such an allure.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

We've been busy little campers here for the last month. Insane hours to get stuff out the door. It's all about MVW cabs, on top of our regular production stuff of flatpacks and miscellaneous parts that we build for BFM and Greenboy cabs.

8 cabs to Stanford. EpiGenetic D15, the new Flyboy install cab, a pair of EpiGenetic 5's and a pair of GC25ACH. They're going to evaluate all of them in various capacities around campus.

Flyboy

EpiGenetic D15

GC25 ACH

And you saw the EpiGenetic 5's in the previous blog.

5 cabs to a potential new dealer. It was a huge crush to get these out the door.
2 GC25 ACH
2 GC28
and the new monster, the GC210
I didn't have time to take real pictures of it. Here's a crappy cell phone pic

Big happenings around here. It's all coming together finally. I'm taking a couple of days off and heading to the lake. Completely burned out, need a recharge

On a bittersweet note, Sam, my son is moving to Seattle. We plan at some point to get him setup to do mfg out there. But it will be a while. I'm very excited for him, and also sad to have him so far away. In the meantime, I have quite a few options for getting help at the shop. Pretty sure I'm going to need more here pretty quick.

Friday, May 15, 2015

These are first cabs to go to Stanford University. They need an excellent small cab for vocal reproduction in small classrooms. The EPG 5 is just an amazing small cab. It's high fidelity capabilities far exceed what they need, but the size, price and shape are perfect for this application. Only 12x8x8, you cannot believe the bass response and smoothness of reproduction from this tiny cab.

I did stain and varnish on these. I'm pretty sure they'll end up in an office or home. The actual production model for the classrooms I expect will be spec'd differently for finish.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Mad Skillz. Here's some pics of Bill Fitzmaurice Wedgehorn 8's that are in progress in the shop. Sam is building them for a customer. I've done quite a few of these, and getting that horn throat square and into the box square is a bugaboo. These are practically perfect.

Me, oh I'm just building some MVW cabs to go to Stanford University. :-) Pics of them to come.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

We are so close. So close. Flying hardware is designed, gone to Engineering for certification. Flown arrays of MVW WT8's are coming, soon. The cabs are done, the drivers have been chosen, built in amplifiers chosen, and they sound magnificent. But right now there's no way to get them in the air or even actually stack them well. Trapezoidal cabs tend to slide around a bit.

For the last couple of years I've been building prototypes and running them here in my small town. The Concert in the Park series provided valuable insights into what we needed for outdoor events. The last show was 4 GC28's per side and a pair of SLVX218's. Which performed incredibly well, but we knew we could do better. From that evolved the GC210, a monster of a cab. 60hz to 18k +-3db. A real +-3db, never more that 3 up or down from centerline. None of that 6db bullshit that can be claimed mathematically it's +-3. It's an outside or BIG inside space. I have 4 of them sitting in the shop right now waiting for final assembly in anticipation of this years CIP series.

All of last year I provided cabs for the Municipal Auditorium. We have a great many shows here in this small town. Once again, all GC28's. We knew we needed something besides a ground stack system, thus the WT8 was brought to the forefront for final development. I just thought the GC28 was a killer box, the WT8 is a whole 'nother level.

The last show I went to at the auditorium there were 2 stacks of RCF HDL10a cabs there. The facilities director had told me he was bringing them in to audition. Pretty plastic boxes, built in amplifiers, nice rigging system, decent sound. I understand these are really popular cabs. About a week later he calls me to say they're going to go out for bids for this system. They're an easy solution. His demands for systems are going up a lot. The pisser for me is I'm literally a month, maybe 2 away from having the WT8 rig up and done. I could not meet the delivery date he specified. Other than that, in every specification the WT8 SMOKES the RCF box. They claim 60-20k response. If you can call 10db down at 60hz and 10db down at 15k 20-20k, I'm going to claim 30-25k for the WT8.

Dispersion is 100deg. He had a pair of JBL's used as center fills during the show. WT8 dispersion is 140degrees. We wouldn't need centerfills even 10 ft from the stage. Hell, the GC28's didn't need centerfills.

When I'm done I'm going to take a half as many cabs as the RCF's into the auditorium and leave them in the dust. Then offer to take that system on trade for a full on MVW system.

There, I've vented. It's just pissing me off to have "missed it by that much". When I know I have a superior product.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

It's been a very long road to get the MVW cabs to where they are now. So many people have been incredibly patient waiting for us to make it happen. Bringing a new product to market is one of the hardest jobs imaginable. It also carries huge risks.

This has certainly been a collaborative effort. Between the designers, me, dealers, and beta tester end users. We are almost there. The standard line is firm.
The PA tops are as follows:

GC25's in two models, the standard and the ACH for installations. 2x5" with compression driver. Perfect for coffee house style gigs, and installations for background and moderate volume levels. I have a couple of bluegrass bands using them in pairs on either side. More than enough.

GC28's for bigger gigs. The model we recommend for bands, djs and such. It takes about 3 GC25's to equal the output of the GC28. 2x8 coaxial drivers. The power of a 15" cab in a much smaller footprint with all the MVW magic. I can't find my GC28 pics. doh.

GC210. The big player. Loud, low, flat response, and oh, did I say loud? 2 10" neodymium drivers and 2 Faital Wg101 waveguides with compression drivers, center fired. Only for the big stuff. Outdoor festivals and such. Finished pics in the next week or so. We have 4 cabs built to this point. I can't wait to run them.

WT8 Line Array Series:
These have taken a very long time to get them where we wanted them. Lots of ergonomic factors in a line array. When you're going to fly cabs you better get it right. They are done, the flying hardware will be done in about 6-8 weeks. A permanent installation model with fly points is available now. These are what we installed in Texas at the Marine Creek Church. They are the best cab in the lineup. Self powered option will be available at the same time as the flying hardware. Pics to come.

Subwoofers.

There's lot going on here in subs. Many styles
RachE line:
RachE 12. Probably the best sounding subwoofer I've ever heard when loaded with a lab12. Available with a several different drivers for different needs. Lower or louder determined by the driver
RachE15. Amazing punch and power for the size. Easily transportable, more output than the 12. Once again several drivers are available.

Red Label Series
SLVX212. Now we're getting serious. Full on dual original MVW waveguides. Big wavefronts, deep response. This is my recommended sub for dj's and have more transport room. It does edm without breathing hard.
SLVX215. More of the same. Still an easily transportable size.
SLVX218. Not for the faint of heart. 325lbs, 5 ft tall. A true pro touring sub. Output that must be heard to be believed.

Here's a pic of the Silver Wheels Skating Rink in Parsons with a temporary setup of 2 GC28's and a SLVX218. When the final install gets done, it will be 2 GC28's, 4 GC25's and a single SLVX218. It sounds amazing now, will be insane when I get it done. 160ft long rink, barely a 3db dropoff to the very back of the building. They're just tickling the lights on the amplifiers running 100-105db. We've never opened it up all the way, but I have no doubt it will reach 125db in this place.

Tested and true is important in pro sound. I have had a system in place in the Parsons Theater now for almost 3 years. Mains, surrounds and subwoofers. It runs every day, 7 days a week, 6-10 hours a day. The mains are a now discontinued model, the subs are RachE18's, and the surrounds are a GC25 variant. Not a peep of problems.

So there you have it. The GCSoundworks website is next. If I survive the rest of the coding for Speakerhardware. It's about done, on the downhill side of that project.

Friday, April 17, 2015

I know I've talked about us redoing the shop, thought I'd post some pics. It has improved workflows dramatically. I know on a mfg scale it looks like a moderate sized hobbyist shop, but you'd be surprised at how quickly stuff can get cut up and assembled. Really we're only using half the space for work area. At one point the other side was nice and tidy, but you can guess how long that lasted. It will become work area also when we need it. Another SawStop cabinet saw is waiting in the wings to be setup.

But, we may not need to expand it much more than this. I now have 2 cnc shops working with me cutting out the more complex parts, in quantities. That will eliminate a crapload of router work on the flat pack kits, which is the most time consuming part. Still working out a few details, but my first order of parts is on the way.

New tool time.

M-Power recently sent me some samples of their router base, point to point marker, and trammel set for evaluation. I alread had one of their excellent scribers. We'll give them all a go in the shop and report back. I think the router base will probably end up on every router I own, just from watching their video. I really like my Jasper Jig, but I hate the fact that it takes a dedicated router. I think the CRB7 will be just as fast, and keep my router versatile.

Monday, April 13, 2015

We don't do many one offs or special orders in the cabinet shop that are outside the standard fare of fEARful, Bill Fitzmaurice, or BigE MVW cabs. It can get really complicated very quickly, and most of the one offs that get requested they basically want me to design them a cab. I can, but that's a completely separate deal from cutting out a box from a drawing.

When I do take them on, I make very clear that you have to be patient. One offs get done in between other stuff. It's also hard coming up with pricing for something you've never done.

Having said all that, recently I had a customer ask about a 1x12 guitar cab in a flat pack. He supplied excellent engineering drawings, agreed to all my bitchy conditions, and we were off.

I like it a lot. I'm going to put it up on the new site. It's clean, simple, and looks really nice. He ordered 2 flat packs, and we started assembling one on accident. I'm glad we did.

It features several ports sizes for tuning. Nice profile, a step above the standard guitar cab, some actual thought went into designing it.

Here's a couple of pics.

Wow, the quality of these are terrible. I have a new camera to take pics with, a Nikon D40. It creates a raw file in the nikon format. When I converted these to jpegs with Gimp it made a mess. Going to have to figure that one out.

Thanks for the advice on the pics Charles. Fixed with a nice little image converter I found.